


Cardimum

by Golyadkin



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Undead Owen Harper, but like so does everyone else, owen has a bad time, post A Day in the Death, post Something Borrowed, welcome to torchwood I guess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:29:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golyadkin/pseuds/Golyadkin
Summary: Cardimum just wants to help all these poor broken people, it's only polite after all. He's doing his best with what he has, but when a man comes to town to inspect all the people he's fixed and the man is more broken than any of them... well, he can't just let him get away.





	Cardimum

A bright light flashed. The world tumbled away. He fell without really going anywhere and there was nothing he could do. Strange energy rushed through him, electric and powerful, making his gut constrict and his hair stand on end, making his heart feel close to exploding. Colours and lights, bright enough to blind him, stung at his eyes and clung to his robes. It was the most beautiful and terrifying thing he had ever experienced and in an instant it was over. Ground reappeared beneath his feet and everything grew dark. The energy still prickled across his skin and up through his neck, but the colour was gone and so was his home.

The ground he now stood on was soft and cool, the air sweet. Above his head were unfamiliar stars, vast and troubling in the way stars always are. A pale moon, distant and pockmarked, shone down at him, and as his eyes began to adjust to it provided him with just enough light to see.

Swallowing back fear he looked around, still dazed from the sudden unexpected journey. Nothing around but the sky and strange grasses that grew up to his chest. He called out quietly, but nobody replied. He called out again, louder this time and his only response was the wind. Hidden behind layers of thick fabric he could not feel it, but it trembled through the grass and whistled low in his ear.

Craning his neck, he turned in place, hoping to find something, anything, that might give him a clue as to where he was. But there was nothing and no one. There was only him and the stars and the grasses and the wind.

He gave out one last desperate shout, more of a cry of frustration than one for help, before admitting that, perhaps, there was nothing that could be done. He was not home. He was nowhere near home. At a loss for what else to do, he decided to walk.

The electricity dancing across his skin faded to a warm buzz as he walked through the field and lent an odd feeling of detachment to the situation, like the body he was in wasn’t really his, like the situation wasn’t quite real. It certainly didn’t seem real, falling through space and landing in a world that wasn’t his own. The more he thought about it the more frightened he became and the quicker he walked.

Time passed and nothing changed. The grass still surrounded him and the wind still blew softly, sending glossy waves through the field. Only the moon shifted, reaching lazily across the unfamiliar sky, but at least it travelled with him. It wasn’t until the moon had begun to drop that he found something of use.

A stretch of road appeared, hidden from sight by the grass and surprising him with its suddenness. Clearly not a natural occurrence, it occurred to him that if he followed it he might be able to find help, someone to tell him where he was. Still, it was with slow cautious steps that he followed the road, walking parallel to it from the safety of the tall grass just in case. The road was far too exposed for his comfort.

It wasn’t until he reached a landmark that tentative hope began to grip him, a small metal sign next to the road that seemed to point in the direction he was going. The language on the sign was foreign and he couldn’t tell what it said, but it was reassuring to know that he was getting closer to something, to anything. So pushing aside the wariness of being exposed on the pavement, he took to the road, much easier to walk on in any case, and continued at a quicker pace. When light appeared on the horizon, not the light of day, but the light of a city, he dropped to all fours and took off at a sprint.

So with hope in his heart and delight on his face, Cardimum raced toward the light that was civilization.

TWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTWTW

Owen was unhappy.

That was a given, of course, Owen was always unhappy, but today of all days he was feeling particularly dysphoric. There was something special about today that had him feeling pissed off at the world and the world seemed to be perfectly content to bring the pain.

Dying had been bad enough and there had been that whole thing with the alien. And that other alien. Basically all of the aliens and the Rift that brought them to his front door. But today seemed intent on rubbing his nerves past the point of fraying until they broke and the tension sent it snapping back right into his miserable little face. Metaphors aside it was honestly turning out to be the worst day he had ever had for no particular reason.

There was no specific event that set his stomach churning that morning, no words spoken that lit the fire deep inside his lifelessly living body. It was still early, but he had woken (not literally) with the notion that things today would not be easy and somehow this notion was being proven right. In what way, he didn’t know. Everything had gone essentially the same as every other day, but worse. The sunrise was exactly the same, but worse; traffic was exactly the same, but worse; the sounds of the Hub were exactly the same, but worse. It wasn’t a matter of quality in events, exactly, more of a general atmosphere of terribleness.

Many days had gone like this while he had been alive, just days where he woke up angry at humanity and everything set him off whether or not it was a genuinely distressing situation. Food would taste wrong and light would be glaring and people’s voices would grate against his eardrums. Waking up on the wrong side of the bed had been a common occurrence. But how, without sleeping or waking, could he wind up in such a terrible mood? He didn’t know.

He could say for certain though that this one thing, this one infuriatingly strange and unexpected moment, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, like everything had been leading up to this moment and his horrible mood was finally being proven right.

So with rage burning deep in his gut and a throat full of fighting words, Owen stormed through the door into the main room of the Hub shouting at the top of his voice, “Why the hell is there a peacock in the Vaults?!”

Gwen and Tosh looked up in surprise and then turned to Jack for an answer. Jack himself stood, mouth agape, staring at Owen with no explanation forthcoming, before turning to Ianto and asking incredulously, “You put Vera in the Vaults?”

Ianto didn’t look up from the pamphlets he was sorting through and shrugged, surprisingly unimpressed. “She kept biting me.”

“So you put her in the Vaults?!”

“It seemed the logical course of action.”

“Excuse me,” Gwen said, raising a finger to get the attention of her co-workers. “Since when have we had a peacock?”

“And why is it named Vera?” Tosh added.

“Vera suited her,” Jack offered.

Owen couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Is everyone going mad? Why,” he cried out, “is there a bloody peacock in the bloody Hub?”

“She came through the Rift last night,” Ianto explained. “We couldn’t figure out where she came from so Jack named her.” He tucked most of the pamphlets under his arm tossing the rest onto the table by the couch. “I suggested Polly Parton, but he thought it was trying too hard. I thought it was clever,” he muttered, making his way towards the lift and his cozy desk in the tourist center.

“Hold up, there,” Jack stopped him. “You are not going anywhere until Vera has regained her freedom.”

Without protest (at least vocally) Ianto spun on his heel and pushed past Owen into the Vaults. Owen himself was still having trouble grasping the concept of Vera existing at all.

“Why did a peacock come through the Rift?” he asked, striding across the room to settle near where Jack was standing behind Tosh. An explanation was required and he was not about to let this go, this was not one of those days where things like this could just slip by with unquestioning acceptance. Owen would not have it.

“No idea,” Jack said with a grin. “Could have come from anywhere, though. We don’t even know if she’s from Earth let alone Cardiff.”

“Wouldn’t surprise me if the Cardiff Zoo loses one of its peacocks in a few days or so, though,” Ianto called out. A fat brown bird waddled through the door ahead of him, head swiveling attentively on a shimmery green neck. Ianto followed close behind, careful not to step on the inquisitive fowl. “Not that they’d notice, they’ve got more than their fair share already.”

“And how do you know she didn’t just happen to wander off from the Zoo last night and end up downtown near a Rift occurrence?” Gwen asked. She eyed the bird suspiciously as it hobbled along next to Ianto who was attempting to get it far enough away as to go through the cog door without it following.

“We got footage of her popping through,” Jack told her with a fond smile cast towards his new pet. Ianto pushed her away lightly with his foot, but she kept close and remained unperturbed. The Captain came to the archivist’s rescue and picked Vera up tenderly. “Poor girl, lost in every way. Time and space, city and country, land and spirit.” He gazed upward thoughtfully. “We are alike. Two souls in parallel.” It would have been poetic had he not been holding a fat brown ball of feathers that was staring intently at the ground below with beady black eyes. Tosh stifled a laugh. “But as it is, she’s stuck with us until we can find her a proper home. A nice quiet farm somewhere she can roam free.” He stroked a hand across her back eliciting a surprised cluck.

Owen knew better, though. As a doctor he was all too aware how many germs birds carried and he made a mental note not to get too close to the creature lest he pick up salmonella or the plague. Sure he was dead and it wouldn’t do much to him, but even then there were bound to be ticks or something that would gladly chew him up. “Those things are diseased, you know,” he informed the Captain with a sneer. “You could catch all kinds of things just by looking at it and I hope you’re not letting it near your food.” If any of these idiots caught something it was their own bloody fault. Let their GP’s deal with it.

“Nah, not Vera,” Jack replied. He wandered back over to the computer stations and Owen took a step back. “She’s got class, look how shiny that coat is. And if it really worries you, Ianto’s promised to take her in to see a vet next week for some shots.”

Owen rolled his eyes and retreated to the relative seclusion of his tiled Autopsy Bay. “Keep that thing out of my space,” was all he managed. It was always pointless to argue with these people.

“What’s the matter, Owen?” Tosh called over to him. “Don’t you like Vera?” She smiled in that stupid way she did that made his stomach twist.

“I don’t like anything that’s capable of giving me rabies, Tosh, love,” he informed her, shoving all the files on his desk into a messy heap on the end. “Not to mention dozens of other viral and bacterial infections and probably a few parasitic infestations as well. That includes you, Harkness, so keep that creature and yourself away from me.”

Jack brought a hand up to his chest in mock astonishment. “You wound us, Owen. I’ll bounce back, but I’m not sure about poor Vera. Look at her face, she’ll never recover.”

Gwen laughed, but kept well enough out of biting range. Ianto’s words of warning had been effective it seemed. “But we can’t keep her, can we?” she asked the Captain, the joy in her voice barely concealing her concern. “As much as I hate to agree with Owen, we can’t exactly let a live bird loose in the Hub. I mean, we have Myfanwy, but that’s a bit different, isn’t it?”

“And sorry to say,” Tosh chimed in, “I don’t think Ianto likes her all that much.”

“He doesn’t like Owen much either, but we keep him around,” Jack said, casting a teasing glance to where he knew the medic was still watching. Owen cursed the twinkle in his eye. Smug bastard. “We’ll find a space for her and I’m sure we can dig up some grub to feed her.”

“I really hope you don’t mean literal grub,” Gwen said with a wrinkle of disgust on her nose. “I can take a bird, but insects is where I draw the line.”

“She has to eat something.”

“Gwen, we’re in an underground base, the fact that it isn’t swarming with bugs already is a miracle,” Owen added, wanting to see that look of disgust again. If he was going to suffer with these people he was going to enjoy it, dammit.

“If Ianto were here he could tell you about some of the spiders he’s found down in the archives,” Jack told them, earning a squeal of dismay from one of the two of them, Owen couldn’t see which. “There were a few that were as big as my hand!” he held up his hand, fingers spread for emphasis, and moved closer to Gwen. “I remember one time he called me down to help him catch one, but we couldn’t find it and suddenly I felt something on my shoulder.”

He reached out and grabbed her shoulder suddenly and she smacked his hand away making him laugh heartily. “Jack Harkness, you stop that right now!” she scolded him, trying to fight off her own laughter. “It’s not funny.”

Tosh edged her chair closer as Jack managed to suppress his fits enough to look at Gwen through widened eyes. “You’re right, it’s not,” he admitted, stifling more laughs, “It was horrifying. Ianto smacked me a with a broom trying to get it off, and then we lost it again. I don’t think we ever found it, so it’s probably still down there in the S-T stacks just waiting for some unsuspecting person to wander by before it drops on them!”

Right on cue Tosh put a hand on Gwen’s back making her scream and leap out of her seat. Jack and Tosh laughed to the point of tears as their victim protested, scratching her back where Tosh’s hand had been as though worried that there really were a spider there.

Oh yes, this day was a bad one, Owen brooded, sinking back in his chair, mood only intensified by the joviality of his colleagues. A bloody peacock, the animal equivalent of his own flashy boss, he would never get any peace around here. He peered tentatively over the edge of his hiding place and watched Jack saunter into his office, bird in tow. Saunter. That’s what Jack did, he sauntered. At least, when he wasn’t swaggering. So much bloody pomp in one man, Owen couldn’t even begin to figure out how he didn’t burst from it. A pompous git was what he was and Owen nodded in agreement with himself at the sentiment.

Settling back in his chair he turned on his monitor, but he didn’t know what to do, really. It was early in the week, the whole debacle of Gwen’s wedding was complete and he had no autopsies to perform. Mentally, he added boredom to the checklist of things that went into the making of a rotten day.

Out of habit he began to reach for a mug of coffee he knew wasn’t there. Even if it had been he wouldn’t have been able to enjoy it. No coffee, no sleep, no sex, no food, no anything that made life worth living. It was like being stuck in his own personal hell and nobody seemed to care. It was like the movie Groundhog day, he thought with a scoff. The same thing day in and day out, not a thing he did mattered and no matter what nothing would ever change. Eternal damnation. He was stuck. Even the video games he played were old news, only really playable to him because he had nothing else to do. The boredom of death was overwhelming.

It didn’t last long, however. Owen was just settling into a posture that he hoped made clear he was working hard and not playing online games when the muffled sound of Jack’s phone ring out. He didn’t think anything of it, probably some boring business call with the Queen or something, but when the Captain burst forth from his lair with a grin on his face Owen knew that things were about to get interesting.

“Okay, kids, grab your things, we’ve got work to do,” Jack bellowed. “Just got word from Cardiff’s finest. Looks like we’ve got ourselves some bodies that appear suspicious just outside of town. Owen, Gwen, with me. Owen, bring your kit, you’ll be examining the bodies. Not that I don’t trust the local talent, but I’d like your personal opinion. Tosh, I need you to stay here, I’ll be sending you some names and locations to check out.” He disappeared back into his office and came back out pulling on his coat.

Gwen shrugged on her jacket as Owen took up his pre-packed autopsy gear (travel sized for extra fun) and the two of them caught up with Jack in the lift. Just before the door closed he said to Tosh with a broad grin, “Oh, and tell Ianto I need him to clean up my office. Vera had a little accident.”

And off they went.


End file.
